Zachary Colbert

Lightroom Gallery. (2025). Field Notes from Elsewhere. Carleton University, Ottawa, ON. with Ozayr Saloojee

https://architecture.carleton.ca/2025/exhibition-field-notes-from-elsewhere/

Excerpt:

“Associate Professor Zachary Colbert and Professor Ozayr Saloojee will present recent sabbatical work in a joint exhibition, Field Notes from Elsewhere. The work, displayed at the Lightroom Gallery at the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, leverages architectural media toward new understandings of place.

Colbert’s work, conducted in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, examines the Law of the River and its architectures through archival and field research.

By tracing resource flows governed by the Law of the River — water, electricity, uranium, coal, and property formation itself — this work expands narratives of postwar growth in central Arizona and southern California. It reveals the environmental, urban, and political transformations that have reshaped the southwestern US, offering new readings of the hydro-infrastructures that underpin urbanization throughout this place.

Through constructed maps and photocollages, this work challenges dominant ways of seeing and knowing the Colorado Plateau. The visible artifacts of image-making — clips, lights, cut edges — invite the viewer into the process of construction. By using the camera sensor as a drawing instrument, these collages ask viewers to confront the historicity of the land and question the authenticity embedded in dominant cultural perceptions of these landscapes.”